


Don't squander the gold of your days

by glossary



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: F/M, Jealousy, Self-Esteem Issues, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 18:36:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3988477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glossary/pseuds/glossary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They talk about Dorogaya Moya in the dimmest corners of the galaxy, sometimes because she’s famous for entertaining Entitleds in her bed but mostly because she breeds the loveliest splices known to man. Caine’s first memory is of her: the short blue bob and the sorrowful tilt of her eyes, her warm soft hands ruffling his hair back. He shifted to bare his throat at her – she smelled like perfume and power and grapes – and she said, calm as you please, “Darling, you’re a terrible mistake. It would be a mercy to kill you.”</p><p>But the way of space is not one of mercy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't squander the gold of your days

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [now I'm ready to feel your hands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3567215) by [bemusedlybespectacled (ardentintoxication)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardentintoxication/pseuds/bemusedlybespectacled). 



> all credit for the dialogue goes to bemusedlybespectacled. this is a remix. mind the tags: this is sad, but not hopeless.

The fear doesn’t lick his mouth like a hungry whore until they’re standing in the cornfield and he sees the way Jupiter’s lashes fall. The sun is warm on his skin, sweet like spring and clean like freshly-moved dirt, and with the golden-green leaves behind her Jupiter’s darker colouring becomes stark and unforgiving. She looks utterly like herself and he adores her and one corner of her mouth curls up a bit when Ylva Dhole says  _Your Majesty_ , wings shifting and fluttering, the uncomplicated set of her eyes almost accusing because he is—he’s not—

Caine doesn’t think _hate_ , clear-cut and neat, because the feeling explodes inside him much too quickly to wait for words.

“I promise to serve you as faithfully, Your Majesty,” says Ylva. She kneels so gracefully it’s painfully lovely to watch. “And guard your assets, your honour, and your life until death or your will breaks our contract.”

Jupiter nods. She’s looking at Ylva with languid curiosity. Something about her – sloe-eyed and pleasant even in rest – conveys all the power she’s still struggling to wear like a particularly fine dress. Caine sees Ylva’s gaze drift down to her throat, vulnerable skin and the throb of her pulse like a tiny bird, and then she’s turning towards him and the moment’s gone. His fear lingers.

He says: “Will you follow me in guarding her majesty’s assets, her honour and her life, and in her absence and in the course of your duty, obey me as you would her?”

 _Obey me as you would her_. Ylva’s face, the fierce eyes, the strong line of her nose and the high cheekbones, it’s like a letter of everything that’s wrong with him and – Jupiter, the faint hint of musk in her scent, the ghostly glimmer of amusement at herself. _Obey me as you would her_ , Caine says, and Ylva says _I will_ , imperturbable, unspeakably proper. Behind her the host of splices waiting to pledge their loyalty shifts like a wave dying in the ocean. Caine tries to breathe.

* * *

He isn’t able to hide his disquiet when they go back to his ship. He thinks about saying something and then – no, of course, why would he? Phantom pain across his jaw – he didn’t know when to keep his fucking mouth shut, he recalls one of his old owners saying, _if you’d just learn your place I wouldn’t have to do this_. His place is not to question Her Majesty.

Jupiter disagrees. Her patience lasts only until they’ve reached his bedroom. “You gonna tell me why you’re being grumpy?” she says, but the light words are pushed aside by her tone of voice – she sounds serious and when he looks at her there is no hidden smile lurking anywhere.

 _You should be grateful for this_ , he thinks about Ylva Dhole and the glory of her wings, sometimes poets wrote about splices the way they wrote about tigers on Earth – the marvel of savagery – and she’s precisely the type they’d find most charming.

She doesn’t give up. Caine bites his tongue until he bleeds. “Or at least what happened during the swearing in today?”

He bows his head a little. Imagines Ylva Dhole kneeling for Jupiter the way one goes weak at the sight of has storm: effortlessly. “What happened during the swearing in?”

“I thought you liked them,” Jupiter says, sounding confused and – almost wounded and he bows his head lower. “You interviewed all of them personally, but then all of sudden you’re all stiff and saying things weirdly.”

 _As you would her_.

They talk about Dorogaya Moya in the dimmest corners of the galaxy, sometimes because she’s famous for entertaining Entitled in her bed but mostly because she breeds the loveliest splices known to man. Caine’s first memory is of her: the short blue bob and the sorrowful tilt of her eyes, her warm soft hands ruffling his hair back. He shifted to bare his throat at her – she smelled like perfume and power and grapes – and she said, calm as you please, “Darling, you’re a terrible mistake. It would be a mercy to kill you.”

But the way of space is not one of mercy.

“I’m not jealous,” he says. He thinks about that long wingspan and the serenity in her manner, like Ylva Dhole was born knowing her place in the world and is at peace with it and he resents that so fiercely for a moment he can’t see straight. Caine has had to fight for every scrap of belonging because (you’re a terrible mistake) there’s something wrong with him, deep and tangled like the knotted roots of an old tree, (it would be a mercy) and some things can’t be fixed (nobody has ever been merciful to him) no matter how long you pray on your knees. Begging for solace has only ever brought him despair. He holds his heart in his hand and continues, low: “You _liked_ her.”

Jupiter makes a tiny bemused moue. “I know. I was impressed. She was impressive. I like you, too. I mean, for different reasons, obviously, but—”

The bitterness leaks out of him like blood from a wound. “Obviously,” Caine says. _Don’t know when to keep your fucking mouth shut_ , a hand closing around his neck, thumb digging into his windpipe and trying to stay still because he was lucky to be owned at all. After he’d tired of hoping to be magically made right he’d started to wish Dorogaya Moya had been merciful. “What is there to compare me to? She’s— _they’re_ everything I’m supposed to be.” And the shame of it won’t abandon him any time soon. “I was a loss to my breeder, I was a failure to the Legion. I’m a runt, a mistake. There’s… something wrong with me, I’m broken, I’m not—”

Sometimes he has terrible dreams where Jupiter takes a knife and guts him slowly and it feels like the forgiveness of a god, finally. If he isn’t good enough to have her then perhaps she can be the last thing he ever kisses.

Jupiter stiffens. “If you’re trying to pull the ‘unworthy’ thing again—”

“But _I am!_ ”

(“I made a mistake,” Dorogaya Moya says, always echoing in the back of his head. “There is no obedience coded into you, merely the need to be ruled. Insofar as one of your kind can be free, darling, you are.” She’d let him finish drinking her favourite brand of tea, glossy purple and lingering on your tongue for hours after. When Caine bit that Entitled they called him Dorogaya’s Shame and she sent him a gleaming silver knife, no bigger than a teaspoon, along with a card marked by her curvy handwriting: _for once caine be kind to yourself_.)

Ylva Dhole would never scream at Her Majesty. Caine crumples in on himself and the phantom pain on his jaw flares until it is all-consuming, _don’t know when to keep your fucking mouth shut_ , it would be a mercy to kill you (be kind to yourself) Jupiter Jones is the best thing to ever happen to him and if she leaves him for something better he can’t blame her. She doesn’t understand all that she’s allowed to do, if she but wants it—he remembers Kalique Abraxas’s thoughtful look. _Well made, by the look of him_. As if speaking of a toy, a whimsical little bit of fun to pass the time. He tenses and waits for whatever his punishment will be because of course he deserves it, he deserves everything she gives him because he doesn’t even—even among his caste, so far below humanity, he is inferior.

Between the hot discomfort of his knees hitting the deck too quickly and Jupiter’s hand on his shoulder there are eons.

Jupiter leads him towards the bed and he acquiesces—of course he does, he’d never deny her anything. He sits down without a shadow of grace and tries to curl up on himself because not for a single moment is he allowed to forget his own shortcomings, is he? She grabs his collar – the dog tags, she calls them – out of the corner of her eye he can see her thumb moving over the engraving and in three seconds she will pull and say _you don’t deserve this_ , will say _you just don’t know when to shut up, do you?_ , will say _you are a terrible mistake, and I will not be merciful enough to kill you_.

“Caine,” Jupiter says, even as anything, “what does this mean?” He doesn’t dare look at her. “Do you want me to tell you? It means that _I chose you_. I didn’t pick another splice, or any other human, because I want _you_. I love _you._ You’re _mine_ , Caine.”

(i love you)

Jupiter’s the one who finishes his tea (you’re mine), is this kindness? It must be, the way humans are rarely kind to each other, he tries and tries and fails to comprehend why she chose him and (it’s not his place to question her, though) he can’t understand but it’s fine if it’s like this, it’s fine if she thinks he’s enough because this is the first time in his life anyone’s ever thought so and he can’t breathe, kisses her like he’ll die if he doesn’t and—maybe (holds his heart in his hand), maybe it’ll keep on being like this, maybe he doesn’t always have to be afraid because Jupiter’s _different_. He likes to have sex (“make love,” she says primly, “make _love_ ”) with Jupiter best out of anyone who’s ever had him before because whenever she touches him it’s like being conquered again, as if he’s brand new every morning just for her, virgin and precious.

“Whose are you?” Jupiter says.

Isn’t it obvious? “Yours,” like someone sucked out the answer out of him and left him hollow and trembling and sparkling clean.


End file.
